I see you point. Its a great one because it's something which has been apparent since FIFA 12 and now with FIFA 1 it shows sliders is killing offline FIFA, not because they are there, not it's people using sliders to make up for EA's incompetence.
Sliders for this game are only a good thing but cannot be used as a pathetic scapegoat to hide the game's glaring problems. Regardless of the settings you implement the flaws will still be there.
What is indefensible from anyone is simply this:
Many games ave included sliders to change and manipulate the gameplay.
The best way to implement the sliders is when a company takes the time to test the sliders out and actually provide some preset slider setups which are orientated to produce a certain type of gameplay with explications.
I won't even talk about NBA 2K. I remember Smackdown 7 i think or Smackdown 2007 with Triple H on the cover, that had sliders and importantly had presets so if you wanted an
'Arcade', 'Casual', 'Hardcore', or the other few presets they where available and also you could tweak from the presets to get your perfect gameplay for yourself.
That shows a company which understands its game and has implemented the sliders and tested it's game so it gives a desired output. Why is this important. Simple, it's a game, its designed to be 'mastered' The default settings is important because people play on them to get as good as possible on the game itself. Then after mastering the game change sliders to suit them. It's very important to understand the basic game setting to understand the core faults and strengths.
Now, as you know, EA have not done this, simply because they cannot be bothered. Nothing is stopping them from putting an effort into their offline game, quite literally after FIFA 13, they have done absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever apart from add in a horrible broken inertia/momentum system into the game since last year. Making the game even more restricted and scripted than before. To understand this further, they didn't even bother to edit the AI is they themselves had the new momentum and inertia applied in a even basic realistic way. The game on the default settings is so unbalanced it's ridiculous.
The AI still play in the exact way as they did 8 years ago on FIFA 08, all play like an army of Zidane clones, pass, pass, pass, maybe a long through ball depending on the custom tactics. Every AI attack, actual attempt on your goal is a pre-scripted hence why the AI always score the same goals from the same positions, there is no AI intelligence here. Same way the AI automatically backs off you regardless of the player you select once you hit L2 (slow dribbling).
EA's focus is online, it's on the kids and ultimate team, EA know they don't have to worry about offline since people now say 'use sliders' (use sliders for about a week till you master that setting,t hen change it, change it again, then again, again). Offline the game has been a shambles for years, yes i think the sliders are good that they are actually there, despite them not actually adding any realism to game physically since they don't tie into the stats properly, instead they increase and decrease the percentage of 'success' or 'fail' for things regarding accuracy at complete random. Regardless of your angle, ability, if you set passing error to higher than 50 regardless of you or the AI, the player has on every occasion he passes a random chance from a certain percentage of getting the pass right or wrong.
Essential: You could be off balance and stretching for a ball but you have the same percent chance to make pass as when your 5 yards away on balance. So the big problems with every match feeling the same never goes away as per usual.
That is how pretty much all of the functions in the game work. Same even on what was manual controls, which is now just as scripted and restrictive as assisted. I play this game against friends on PC now, played next gen vs a mate here in oz, the times I've tired this offline, so much has got worse over the years!